There are now millions of pages available on the web, and plenty more sources of information--blogs, wikis, Twitter feeds, PDFs, newsgroups, list-serves, etc--that might have valuable information for a researcher. It's now easy to find information about nearly any topic; but it's also increasingly harder to find great information because there's so much of it out there. Being able to sort through all of this information and quickly find what you want is an essential part of web literacy and is clearly a big part of doing research on the web.
Mister Fischer's guide to some very useful web search tools and other resources related to search.
Another overview, slightly more academic, from Babson College, introducing students to web searching, search engines, and how search engines order their findings during a search.
But...There are MANY other search engines out there, and some are a lot better for specific types of searches. Here's a guide to a lot of these different search engines (this is really, really useful).
Here's a new peer-review site that finds and organizes the best sites for research purposes. This would be incredibly useful for students who are searching for the best sites, rather than having to sift through all that might pop up in a Google search.
Mister Fischer's guide to some very useful web search tools and other resources related to search.
Here's a basic overview of how to search the web effectively from Common Craft.
How does Google Search work? (a video by Google itself)
Another overview, slightly more academic, from Babson College, introducing students to web searching, search engines, and how search engines order their findings during a search.
Google's guide to web searching
Great techniques for better searching on Google*
But...There are MANY other search engines out there, and some are a lot better for specific types of searches. Here's a guide to a lot of these different search engines (this is really, really useful).
More great search tools
How to search for topics that might be in blogs (rather than on web pages only)
How to search the rest of the web: wikis, blogs and tweets
Here's a new peer-review site that finds and organizes the best sites for research purposes. This would be incredibly useful for students who are searching for the best sites, rather than having to sift through all that might pop up in a Google search.
Information about "filter bubbles" (video)
Evaluating Web Pages
Guidelines for evaluating web pages--a complete resource from UC Berkeley
How to find out how recently a website has been updated--www.archive.org
**Find out who is linking to this page** (which might help you figure out bias)
**Find out who owns a particular web page**